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You've probably heard about poop pills, the latest way for humans to get benevolent bacteria into their guts. But it seems that a group of ants may have been the original poop pill pioneers—46 million years ago.

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The Asian tiger mosquito -- carrier of such diseases as dengue, yellow fever, Rift Valley fever, Chikungunya and Zika -- appears to have vanished from Palmyra. Not native to the small atoll 1,000 miles south of Hawaii, Aedes albopict likely came to Palmyra during World War II, when the United St ...

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Flowers are just about the last thing in nature you'd list as fast, but the mountain laurels' filaments are an exception.The defining characteristic of the flowers, which are native to the eastern United States, is a series of 10 arms or filaments that act like catapults, flinging pollen into th ...

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f you've enjoyed some spicy food lately, you might have a bird to thank.A new study involving Iowa State University researchers explores how a mutualistic, or mutually beneficial, relationship between birds and chili peppers in the Mariana Islands helps chili peppers grow in the wild. The study, ...

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An international team of researchers has found evidence that suggests human efforts to restore damaged ecosystems are not always better than simply letting nature take its course. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group describes analyzing over 400 studies docum ...

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A collaboration between the Benning and Kramer labs is revealing how nature's solar panels, found inside algae, constantly grow and shrink in size to adjust to changes in their environments, a crucial system that ensures their hosts stay healthy and alive.

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A University of Pennsylvania paleontologist has described a 5.5 million-year-old fossil species of turtle from eastern Tennessee. It represents a new species of the genus Trachemys, commonly known as sliders, which are frequently kept as pets today.

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A team of researchers from NASA and several other institutions in the U.S. and Europe has found evidence of ice melt accelerating in some western parts of Antarctica. In their paper published in the journal Cryosphere, the group describes the new technology they used to study ice melt in Antarct ...

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Scientists from Royal Holloway, University of London and the University of Cambridge have been taking part in an experiment to optimise broad beans to increase bee visitation rates; and their findings could benefit both the beans and the bees.

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Researchers of the University of Turku, Finland, have studied a timber elephant population in Myanmar and discovered that Asian elephant personality manifests through three factors. The personality factors identified by the researchers are attentiveness, sociability and aggressiveness.

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Male and female of same species can develop to be different to the point that they keep different species from advancing or colonizing living spaces. The study also challenges long-held hypotheses in transit normal choice drives the advancement of biodiversity.

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Diploid vertebrates have two sets of chromosomes, one from each parent. In contrast, polyploidy, meaning to possess three or more sets of chromosomes, is very rare in animals. To find out how new vertebrate species have evolved, and, more generally, how the current biodiversity emerged, evolutio ...

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How do fish end up in isolated bodies of water? For centuries, researchers have assumed that water birds transfer fish eggs into these waters—however, a systematic literature review by researchers at the University of Basel has shown that there is no evidence of this to date.

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It is a fascinating insight into the biology of an extinct animal. Scientists have scanned all known preserved Tasmanian tiger "joeys" to better understand the marsupial's key early development phases.

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A seminal event in the Earth's history - when plants appeared on land - may have happened 100 million years earlier than previously thought. Land plants evolved from "pond scum" about 500 million years ago, according to new research.

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A massive global study involving 58,000 cattle has pinpointed the genes that influence the complex genetic trait of height in cattle, opening the door for researchers to use the same approach to map high-value traits including those important for beef and milk production.

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As well as an interest in all insects, Flinders biological sciences Ph.D. Ben Parslow has a fascination for wasps.The focus of his doctorate research on the wasp genus Gasteruption has accidently has put him on the trail of describing the 11th species of an endemic Australian wasp genus.

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A new genealogy of plant evolution, led by researchers at the University of Bristol, shows that the first plants to conquer land were a complex species, challenging long-held assumptions about plant evolution.

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If you go down to the shore today, you're sure of a big surprise. Many will have witnessed the presence of a starfish or two when visiting the seashore or a public aquarium. Starfish come in an exciting range of colours and sizes, but have you ever given a thought to how this multi-armed wonder ...

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It's an age-old debate for coffee lovers. Which is better: Arabica beans with their sweeter, softer taste, or the bold, deep flavor of Robusta beans? A new study by WCS, Princeton University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison appearing in the journal Scientific Reports has taken the questi ...

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When simulating future environmental conditions, researchers confront a problem: Laboratory experiments are easy to control and to reproduce, but are insufficient to mimic the complexity of natural ecosystems. In contrast, experiments under real conditions in nature are much more complicated and ...

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A dangerous fungus has been sweeping across North America with devastating consequences. In the past decade, between 5m and 7m bats in the US and Canada have been wiped out as a result of the fungal disease known as white nose syndrome, which alters their behaviour in potentially deadly ways. Bu ...

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Temporary lakes and ponds emit CO₂ even when they are dry, and dry areas emit a larger amount of carbon into the atmosphere. This phenomenon, described now for the first time, could have an impact on the global carbon cycle that controls Earth's climate, according to a study led by Biel Obrador ...

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The modern medical era began when an absent-minded British scientist named Alexander Fleming returned from vacation to find that one of the petri dishes he forgot to put away was covered in a bacteria-killing mold. He had discovered penicillin, the world's first antibiotic.

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Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today, the study, by the University of Adelaide’s Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) and Landcare Research NZ, reconstructed the prehuman New Zealand ecosystem using coprolites ranging from 120 to 1500 years old. The ancient ...

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A team of researchers with the University of St Andrews and the University of Cambridge, both in the U.K., has found that singing crickets in Hawaii have evolved to silence their singing apparatus but continue to sing inaudibly. In their paper published in the journal Biology Letters, the group ...

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Researchers have discovered the first known molecular evidence of obligate symbiosis in lichens, a distinctive co-evolutionary relationship that could shed new light on how and why some multicellular organisms consolidate their genomes in order to co-exist.

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Hummingbirds are the fighter pilots of the avian world, diving and weaving at speeds of up to 55 kilometers per hour—then turning on a dime to hover midair, wings frantically beating, as they refuel on nectar. Now, through herculean efforts, researchers are one step closer to figuring out what m ...

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Animals have evolved all manner of adaptations to get the nutrients they need. For nectar-feeding bats, long snouts and tongues let them dip in and out of flowers while hovering in mid-air. To help the cause, their tongues are covered in tiny hairs that serve as miniature spoons to scoop and dra ...

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In Tim Burton's classic comedy "Beetlejuice", the toxic title character can escape from his inferno only if someone pronounces his name three times in a row.The real-world bombardier beetle escapes from its purgatory—the belly of a predator—by squirting the real thing: boiling-hot pulses of noxi ...

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Researchers from Aarhus University have measured a new world record: Small ice algae on the underside of the Arctic sea ice live and grow at a light level corresponding to only 0.02 percent of the light at the surface of the ice. Algae are the primary component of the Arctic food web and produce ...

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Termites are "social cockroaches." They evolved from ancestral solitary cockroaches some 150 million years ago, at least 50 million years before bees, ants and wasps evolved similar intricate societies independently of termites. Termites live in complex societies characterized by division of lab ...

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A study mapping how dinosaurs spread across the world shows they may have been a victim of their own success. UK researchers believe they were already in decline before the killer asteroid hit because they had occupied every habitat on Earth.

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Alberta’s ecosystems and the natural beauty they create are still largely intact but parts are disappearing at rates that exceed deforestation in the Amazon rain forest. “We continue to lose ecosystems,” said researcher Jahan Kariyeva. “That we can definitely see.”

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A new review, led by Plymouth Marine Laboratory scientists, sets priorities for the benefit of future benthic research.The benthic environment is critical to marine ecosystems. It harbours a wealth of life on, in, and above the seabed, and is vital to ocean systems, marine biodiversity, and clim ...

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New research proves that environmental DNA survives for less than two days in small fast-flowing rivers and so provides highly localised and current information on species composition. This is crucial new evidence as biologists turn increasingly to new DNA sampling techniques to assess aquatic e ...

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A new study led by the University of Birmingham shows that the brain of turtles has evolved slowly, but constantly over the last 210 million years, eventually reaching a variety in form and complexity, which rivals that of other animal groups.

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The salmon from the chalk streams of southern England appear to be genetically distinct from others. Evidence published in the Journal of Fish Biology suggests they may be a separate sub-species of Atlantic salmon.